Ex-Tory minister says Afghan resettlement scheme was ‘most hapless display of ineptitude' he saw in government

The Guardian

18 hours ago

Update:
Date: 2025-07-16T07:09:49.000Z
Title: Dan Sabbagh
Content: Good morning. Normally when ministers make announcements in the House of Commons, we know at least some of the detail already because they been well trailed in advance. Yesterday was a rare example of a ministerial statement being used to reveal something utterly surprising and genuinely new (at least to anyone who had not seen the stories that dropped just 30 minutes earlier, when reporting restrictions were lifted). And this was a story about the murky operation of the Deep State. Here is our overnight story, by and Emine Sinmaz.
Today attention is focusing on who is to blame. And two former Tory ministers are having their say in rival articles in the Daily Telegraph.
Ben Wallace, who was defence secretary when the leak happened, has used his article to defend going to court to stop the inadvertent release of names being reported. He said:
I make no apology for applying to the court for an injunction at the time. It was not, as some are childishly trying to claim, a cover up.
I took the view that if this leak was reported at the time, the existence of the list would put in peril those we needed to help out.
Some may disagree but imagine if the Taliban had been alerted to the existence of this list. I would dread to think what would have happened.
Wallace has also been on the Today programme this morning, and he insisted he was not to blame for the injunction being a superinjunction. He said:
When we applied in August 2023, when I was secretary of state, we didn't apply for superinjunction. We applied for a four-month injunction, a normal injunction.
Wallace said it was the court that converted this into a superinjunction (meaning not just that the leak could not be reported, but the very existence of an injunction gagging the media could also not be reported). Wallace claimed he did not know why.
In his article Wallace largely defends the decisions taken by the previous government, but Johnny Mercer, who was veterans ministers in the same government (but not in the MoD – he worked out of the Cabinet Office), is very critical of the way the whole Afghan resettlement programme was handled. In his Telegraph article he said:
Whilst there will no doubt be a rush to blame the individual who sent it (I know who he is), it would be entirely unfair and wrong to do so. Because I can honestly say this whole farcical process has been the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government, of which this poor individual was just the end of the line …
The MoD has tried at every turn to cut off those from Afghan special forces units from coming to the UK, for reasons I cannot fathom.
They also lied to themselves about doing it. The UK's director of Special Forces told me personally that he was offended and angry by my suggestion that his organisation was blocking the Triples.
Certain MoD ministers had a criminal lack of professional curiosity as to why the Triples [members of the Afghan special forces] were being rejected when there were so many subject matter experts who said they clearly should be eligible.
They even tried for a long time to say that Afghan special forces were not eligible.
Mercer said the UK ended up letting the wrong people in.
And the net result of this spectacular cluster is that we've let into this country thousands with little or tenuous links to the UK, and still some Afghan special forces we set up the bloody schemes for, remain trapped in Afghanistan, Pakistan or worse, Iran.
I feel furious, sad and bitter about the whole thing, and do as much as I can to get through each day not thinking about Afghanistan.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Liz Kendall, work and pensions secretary, gives evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee.
10am: David Lammy, foreign secretary, gives evidence to the Commons international development committee.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Noon: The Home Office is publishing a report by David Anderson KC into the Prevent programme.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can't read all the messages BTL, but if you put 'Andrew' in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can't promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.